Our literary Chicagoans of the year? These passionate local bookstore owners.

Of course the literary Chicagoan of 2014 could have been a happy author, any one of the many local writers who had a very good 2014. Some of the year's most elegant nonfiction came from Eula Biss' slender breakthrough "On Immunity," and some of its best fiction came from novelist Cristina Henriquez and her "Book of Unknown Americans." Jeffrey Brown's popular "Star Wars" books for kids brought the once-obscure cartoonist closer to pop ubiquity. Esteemed short-storyist Stuart Dybek released two acclaimed works on the same day. Legendary historian Garry Wills turned 80 without snapping his book-a-year streak. Meanwhile, both Gillian Flynn and Veronica Roth had successful Hollywood adaptations and took home all of the cash.

But would there even be a book community in Chicago to talk about without, you know, local booksellers?

The past year was framed by a seemingly intractable standoff between Amazon and the publishing world, an ugly skirmish often spun as no less than the first salvo in a struggle for control of written words.

And yet: Despite an uncertain outlook, a number of local women have stepped up recently and either started new bookstores in the Chicago area or became the next-gen owners of beloved neighborhood institutions.

They have not only shown faith in the printed word, but they backed it up, financially, socially and spiritually. "If you bought a bookstore lately, you probably feel at least a little like you're fighting the good fight," said Stephanie Hochschild, who bought the 42-year-old Book Stall in Winnetka last year from its retiring owner.

"And you know what I hear all the time?" asked Nina Barrett, who started the new Bookends and Beginnings in June in the same location where the once-venerable, eccentric Evanston mainstay Bookman's Alley stood. "I hear I am 'so brave.' I get the kind of compliments that suggest, in a very backhanded way, (that) what I am doing is a completely doomed undertaking. But I have my reasons for thinking this is not a stupid idea."

The video store (or what's left of it) is running on fumes, the record store is a haven for aficionados and nostalgia. But these new bookstore owners are making a compelling case for the viability of the bookstore, a future rooted in a not-particularly-virtual understanding of what "community" means.

In October 2013 Eleanor Thorn took over the 65-year-old Lake Forest Book Store after its owner retired. She said that she wouldn't have taken a financial risk on a bookstore if "I didn't think I would be around 10 years from now. But even my family thought I was insane. They see the big-box guys, they see Amazon, but when I showed them the actual support in this community for this store, then it didn't look like a risk anymore."

Teresa Kirschbraun — the veteran bookseller of the bunch, having opened Logan Square's City Lit two years ago — said that when her store started, its author events were sporadically attended. "And now it's unusual if we get less than two dozen people. Plus, our story-time events on Saturdays draw at least 30 families a week. So, to be honest, I am not feeling the weight of digital culture, because I am at the heart of real community. Which is exactly what I, and a lot of other people who have bought bookstores lately, had planned on all along."

The Book Stall has stepped up its commitment to social media and book clubs, while Lynn Mooney and Sarah Hollenbeck, employees of Andersonville's Women & Children First who bought the five-decade-old store in the spring when its founders decided to sell, are redesigning and adding a new performance space next month.

Mooney said: "It's so funny. The number of people who told us we were crazy to buy an old bookstore in 2014 is about the same number who've thanked us for stepping in and making sure it doesn't end."

Hollenbeck said: "If we feel like pioneers, it's in the sense that we have to innovate on what came before."

And that innovation, more or less, is to serve as an antithesis to a cold digital climate — a shot of blood in a fragmented culture, a place for running into books, people and ideas you didn't realize you were interested in. If there's irony, it's that, in the '90s, the quiet neighborhood bookstore, celebrated in "You've Got Mail" as a tiny citadel of warmth hemmed in by corporate behemoths, has outlived the big-box booksellers, which have either expired (Borders) or lost standing. Indeed, according to Dan Cullen, spokesman for the American Booksellers Association, the number of independent bookstores in the United States has seen consistent modest increases since 2009, enough for the organization to claim "a nice resurgence for indies."

There is, however, nothing ironic about Amazon, which is now the largest bookseller in the world.

"Amazon isn't going anywhere and we all have to recognize that," said Erika VanDam, who opened the new RoscoeBooks in Roscoe Village last month. "They will remain the market leader, and the way we deal with that is by becoming more than just a place where people come in and buy books. Amazon is beyond my control, but I can control how I program the events that we hold in here and I can keep a great inventory."

VanDam, who would only say her startup costs were in the $150,000-$300,000 range, is a former billboard advertising salesperson for Clear Channel Communications. Barrett, who worked on and off at Women & Children for 15 years, has been a two-time James Beard Award-winning journalist for her WBEZ public radio segment "Fear of Frying." Hochschild was a lawyer, Kirschbraun a health care consultant.

But now they all find themselves stepping into a very unstable transitional moment for reading: Can neighborhood booksellers coexist with Amazon? Can the quaint pleasure of paper coexist with e-readers?

"I actually have had younger people who, when I told them I was opening a bookstore, wanted to know what I could possibly do differently than Barnes & Noble," Barrett said. "When you have a generation who have grown up in a culture of big-box stores and know nothing else, the odds may be probably against you." Likewise, Kirschbraun said she is routinely asked by customers to match discounted prices on Amazon.

Still, what's critical to keeping bookstores alive, Kirschbraun added, "is young people — kids. Kids books, that (tactile) experience you have with them, can't be replicated digitally. So I'm growing that section, and hopefully kids come in, get books in their DNA and the next generation preserves the bookstore, too."